Moving the Chains: NASCAR for dummies

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When a friend of mine found out I write a sports column for the newspaper, he mentioned that he was a huge fan.  Of sports, that is; not my columns.  He said that although he enjoyed watching sports, he didn’t particularly like to read about them. 

He said he would make an exception, however, if I wrote a column about NASCAR.   

I said I’d be glad to write about NASCAR, but that there was just one problem: I know absolutely nothing about it.  It would be like asking Les Miles to write about proper clock management or – for those of you missing the intended sarcasm – Jeffrey Dahmer (RIP) to write about vegetarian diets.

But still, I told him I’d give it a shot.  So fasten your seat belts (see what I did there?).    

The first thing I had to do was find out what NASCAR stands for.  While this is probably common knowledge for most of you, this is for those of us who didn’t have a clue: NASCAR is an acronym for National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing.  

Right off the bat I found two things wrong with the name.  First, the letter ‘F’ for the word ‘for’ is omitted in NASCAR.  Second, even someone like me knows that ‘car’ and ‘auto’ are the same thing, so why the redundancy?

Moving on.  (Maybe I should say ‘switching gears.’  That makes it sound more ‘automotive.’)

Before a stock car race even begins, an announcer gives instructions for the drivers to start their engines, which to me seems rather obvious since the cars wouldn’t be at the starting line had the drivers not already done so in the first place.  Besides, I don’t ever see basketball coaches telling their players to tie their shoes before taking the court or football coaches reminding their players to put their jockstraps on before the opening kickoff.  So do NASCAR drivers really need to be told to do something that should already be second nature? 

(I think I’m beginning to see why people around NASCAR drink so much Budweiser.  

At least according to what I’ve been told by various NASCAR fans who have been known 

to put away a couple of cases over the course of a weekend at Talladega.)

From what I’ve observed over the years – inadvertently, mind you; never on purpose – NASCAR is a bunch of really fast cars driving in circles for hours on end until someone crosses the finish line first.  That driver is proclaimed as ‘the winner,’ and usually it’s because he has the fastest pit crew that is responsible for changing tires, refueling the car, and reminding the driver to use his blinker.   (I apologize if this all sounds too technical.)

By this point it’s rather obvious I have no idea what I’m talking about, so I’m going to do something I don’t normally do.  I’m going to quit making stuff up as I go and do a little research.  Here’s a few interesting things I found about NASCAR:

• Pit stops usually take in the neighborhood of 15 seconds.  Meanwhile, during the time a driver spends at a pit stop, every other driver on the track has circled the track two or three times (ballpark guess) because they’re driving a gazillion miles per hour while the driver in the pit stop has his car in park.  

• They hold NASCAR races in countries other than the United States.  Australia, Japan, Mexico, Canada, and Brazil have them as well – although their respective fans prefer drinking beer from local breweries because they think Budweiser tastes like beer-flavored water. 

• A white one means there is one lap remaining for the car in the lead, and a checkered flag means the race is over (to my credit, I already knew that).  Green means go, yellow means  caution, and red means slam on the brakes – just like they do in real life.  They probably need add a pirate-like skull and crossbones flag to indicate dangerous conditions, like debris on the track or an accident.  (They could also adopt using it at hockey games when fights break out, basketball games when players flop on the court, and baseball games when batters adjust their crotches too many times.)  

Here’s a few more things I learned about NASCAR.  It’s been around since 1947.  Richard Petty is considered to be the ‘King’ and has the most wins (200).  Jeff Gordon has the most consecutive starts (797).  1959 was the year of the first Daytona 500.  In Latin, nas means ‘lead’ and car means ‘foot.’    

Tell the truth: even if you’re already a NASCAR fan, you just learned something new.  I’m going to go ahead and add one more thing that may come as a surprise:

Recent trends in NASCAR attendance indicates that the popularity of the sport is decreasing.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.  Coincidentally, Budweiser is also no longer the top-selling beer in the United States.  I’m not sure there is any correlation, but maybe you could find out from someone in Talladega.  

So why did I spend this entire column doing laps (see, I did it again!) around the subject my friend wanted me to write about in the first place?  Two reasons, actually: to see if I could, and to see if he’d read it.    

Because until now, I never wrote about NASCAR for the simple reason that if I did, there was Not A Snowball’s Chance Anything’s Right.
Or to put it another way: NASCAR.